David Ruffley, the shadow minister for police reform, has exclusively revealed through a piece for the Platform blog this afternoon how the next Conservative Government will save one million hours of police time.

He pledges today that the Conservatives will reverse what he describes as the "bureaucratic madness" of allowing only Crown Prosecution Service lawyers to charge the vast majority offenders at police stations – a power that was taken away from police sergeants in 2003.

By doing so, he explains, the Conservatives will cut back on huge amounts of unnecessary bureaucracy and form-filling and save a similarly large amount of police time.